Permalink : http://hdl.handle.net/2115/78156

JaLCDOI : 10.14943/jbr.10.71

This article covers border immigrant aesthetics "Rasquachismo" by interpreting Chicana/o artworks in Mexican communities in the United States. The sensibility "Rasquachismo" was basically elaborated by Latino art scholar Tomás Ybarra-Frausto (1938–) as "have-not" grassroots Chicana/o aesthetics. In response to Ybarra-Frausto's "Rasquachismo," Chicana artist Amalia Mesa-Bains (1943–) gleaned female daily expressions inside domestic life and Chicana/o communities, and named their attitude as Domesticana to emancipate their expressions from uncritical male-oriented "Rasquachismo." After referencing previous studies, this article defines "Rasquachismo" as border immigrant aesthetics and presents the concepts of "duality," "hybridity" and "slowness" to deepen the understanding of "Rasquachismo." This argument strengthens the perspective of "others" in Chicana/o culture, which has not been adequately discussed in previous studies, and tries to broaden the applied possibility of this sensibility to different case studies or fields using these three notional angles above. "Chicana/o" is a political, cultural and historical term associated with the Chicano Movement of the late 1960s. This term has a double meaning. It used to be a despised word that implied Mexican migrants before the Movement, having connotations as "poor," "second-class," and those meanings still remain today. In the late 1960s, some Mexican Americans converted such negative meanings to positive identity as their self-affirmation. They also made various artworks in order to visualize their own narratives, like murals, silk-screen posters, poetry, music, literature, bilingual newspapers, tent theatres, and so on. These are defined as both Chicana/o culture and art. In this article, the concept "border" is founded on Chicana writer Gloria Anzaldúa's (1942–2004) bilingual writing of Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza published in 1987. According to Anzaldúa, "U.S-Mexican border is an open wound (una herida abierta) where the Third World grates against the first and bleeds. And before a scab forms it hemorrhages again, the lifeblood of two worlds merging to form a third country - a border culture." Anzaldúa's "border" or "open wound" concepts can be also seen in "Rasquachismo" as an "outsider within" or a stance to discover new worth into chaotic situations beyond static dichotomies. This border sensibility always embraces wounds, weaknesses and failures. This article analyzes conditions of "Rasquachismo" on Chicana/o art, basically referring to the critique of Ybarra-Frausto, who chiefly elaborated the characteristics of "Rasquachismo" in 1988 when the Symposium and regional exhibition "Chicano Aesthetics: Rasquachismo" was organized by the Arizona Art Organization, MARS. In Spanish, "Rascuache" means having bad taste or being worth almost nothing. According to Ybarra-Frausto, "Rasquachismo" is a grass-root sensibility, an attitude and a taste which develops a bilingual consciousness within Mexican communities in the United States. It is the resilient art of making do with what's at hand. The artworks are made of discarded materials, like tires, coffee cans or broken glasses. Making Chicana/o murals with daily resources are also appropriate examples of "Rasquachismo." Mesa-Bains exposed the male domination of "Rasquachismo" under Mexican culture and focused on female daily expressions like the home alter for Mexican Festival: Day of the Dead, embellishments of sawing boxes. She named their spirits of internal artworks as Domesticana, arguing that it is the counterpart of male-oriented "Rasquachismo." It is defiant and inventive, subverting the restriction unique to women in Chicana/o society. In this article, I presented two artworks as examples of Domesticana. One is the mixed-media installation "Emblems of the Decade: Borders" (2015–2018) by Mesa-Bains. Another is the Chicano mural "Immaculate Perception" (1992). Both artworks describe spatial, temporal transitions from inside the house, and ambiguities to emancipate from colonial and patriarchal oppression. Following arguments in previous studies, this article defines "Rasquachismo" as border immigrant aesthetics, and points out "duality" "hybridity" and "slowness" as the characteristics of this sensibility. Firstly, in terms of "duality," "Rasquachismo" attitude is naturally bilingual like speaking with an accent in both Spanish and English. This sensibility dismantles existing dichotomies between Mexico and United States, rural and urban areas, past and future, etc. Secondly, "Rasquachismo" is a "hybrid" like menudo, a mixed tripe soup. It seems too vague to understand, but it is possible to create new values, like a mixed art with graffiti and murals in East Los Angeles. Thirdly, slowness is a key to describe the time dimension of Chicana/o "Rasquachismo." Chicana/os make their own speed and rhythm. They ride lowrider cars with a specific way of "low and slow." They play music sometimes mellowly. With such slow speed, they go out of rhythm and then dissimilate themselves. As a result, the border aesthetics "Rasquachismo" is not just a limited sensibility for Chicana/os. Such border aesthetics like "Rasquachismo" keep producing and reproducing daily border immigrant expressions by downtrodden people to transcend various borders, and to put differences together under the world of living with others in constant social mobilization and fluidization.